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Forum:38: White Feather and the Pinioned Seagull
The group, on arriving in the Free City of Tzen, met a former Lordinian guide by the name of Richard Hughes who offered the group a guided tour of the city in exchange for a small fee. The group, somewhat unfamiliar with the city, opted to oblige the fellow and look at some of the city's sights. They took in the distillery and water-processing district known as "Sui-Jiwu" and took a look at the old gladiatorial arena, currently repurposed to stage mock battles between famous local participants. Hughes, however, was quickly convinced to drink in the company of his clients and took the group to a bar, where he laid bare his history with a Lordinian colonial venture company that was destroyed by the Seven Sainted Beasts of Zhou. The creatures, apex predators of the southern jungles of the continent, were apparently capable of demolishing the colonial venture, and are said to possess intelligences at least on par with those of humans, as evidenced by their ability to use tactics and work together to some extent. Hughes, not a soldier himself, was astonished that he managed to escape them, but surmised that perhaps they were leaving him alive as a warning to the other people of Zhou. The revelry ended, the party took leave of Zhou after resolving a marital dispute between Hughes and his wife, Bhadra. Their destination was the cavern which Lin once called home, and on route they were accosted by a Roc looking for food, and the enigmatic Wandering Wheel, a giant stone wheel which Hughes warned them about, that roams the countryside and impedes the progress of travelers with minor acts of petty vandalism. On arrival in the cavern, however, the man called White Feather Luo was nowhere to be found, and all signs pointed to him having been gone for close to a month. The party also discovered that some sort of evil force had explored the premises recently, and that the vanished sifu had also kept a kris dagger belonging to a Tzen officer in his cave. Uncertain of what these signs portented, Lin opted to summon Kamome to deliver a message to her master, but Kamome was mysteriously incapable and suffered several mishaps in trying to use her trademark teleportation. Though the party was concerned about changing their focus so abruptly, they opted to offer their assistance, and the Lordly Raven had the girl take them back to her home, apparently situated inside a Zhou mountain to the south. Therein, the group found the "1/2 Way Post," a home that Kamome had set up, and it was there that the group were confronted with the sight of several dozen Kamome, at various ages and stages of life, who greeted their "sister" warmly. The group met the eldest Kamome known as "Mother", who explained that the girl known as Kamome was once a Hafuujou citizen dedicated to mail delivery early in the Empire's inception. The Lordly Raven and his right hand man, the engineer Olaf Olafsen thus elected to perform a procedure on her, which allowed her to give birth to clones of herself, and also use the unique teleporting skill. Thus, these Kamome is present in many Imperial holdings and satellite worlds, and deliver the mail on a massive scale. Mother thus suggested that the Kamome who had responded to the party's summons travel with them in order to find a way to either correct her deficiency or learn something about how to improve the postal service, and released her into the Party's consideration under the name "Kamome-san". The group then had their letter delivered free of charge as thanks. White Feather Luo, for his part, was reticent in his response and told Lin that she had no obligation to return to him, as her life is her own now. Lin, uncertain of the nature of this response, declared her intention to find her sifu again, and he simply replied "Very well." Now that it was apparent that the man would not be easy to find, and would offer little cooperation in that regard, the group began to consider their next move... Rewards for the last sessions are as follows: *2000 exp each for seeing Tzen and getting Hughes back on track, interactions with the Wandering Wheel and the Kamome. *One Kamome, to be known as "Kamome-san", who can deliver messages or store equipment for use by the rest of the group.